Well-paid Vietnam football stars are increasingly looking to the investment sector as a way of supplementing their incomes away from the pitch.
The most recent sports star to go into business is national Olympic team’s goalkeeper Bui Tan Truong, who received VND5 billion (USD250,000) for an extended three-year contract with V-League football club Dong Thap last year.
Truong, who is also a senior national team keeper, invested more than VND 1billion in a joint complex of six artificial-turf pitches with Nguyen Ngoc Anh Tu, who works for a military company.
The complex called Sai Gon Football Club K2 is on Tran Van Du Street, Tan Binh District and has six pitches for five-person games. Each pitch has 12 lights.
“Truong is a good player and a well-behaved person. So I decided to ask him to join me in this complex, which is worth about VND4 billion (USD200,000),” Tu said to VietnamNews.
“I am a player, so opening mini-artificial turf business is something I am familiar with,” said Truong.
He is also investing his money to open an internet shop for his wife and buying a 16-seater Mercedes Benz van for his brother.
“When I’m away playing football, Tu will manage the business. We believe in each other. After one week of operation, I feel optimistic about our success.”
Although the complex has only been open for a week during pre-Lunar New Year holidays, not a prime time for his target customers, many youth visited the complex.
Truong is not the first football star to use his earnings in this way and not get caught up in lavish spending as some of the other players.
Le Huynh Duc, the Vietnam national team’s former striker and now coach of former V-League champion, SHB Da Nang, has sports shops in HCM City and Da Nang.
However, star striker Le Cong Vinh, who once opened a restaurant in Vinh Yen city of Vinh Phuc Province with Ha Noi T&T teammate Duong Hong Son, said many players did not have enough time to devote to management.
But he also pointed that managing an artificial grass-turf business was not as difficult or time-consuming.
Last year, national Olympic team player Pham Thanh Luong opened a cafe named Diva in Hanoi while national team striker Nguyen Anh Duc did the same with a chain of shops that sells sports equipment in Binh Duong Province and HCM City.
